Jean-Claude Brialy: 1933 - 2007

Star of French New Wave films

Jean-Claude Brialy, a dashing leading man of the French New Wave films of the 1960s and '70s, died Wednesday in Paris. He was 74.

His death, of cancer, was confirmed by the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, who praised his "finesse and his light spirit."

The New Wave movement, which began to flourish in the late 1950s, was a rebellion against the conventions of cinema. The director became the intellectual author of the movie; the stars were made more human, the stories more enigmatic.

Mr. Brialy's starring roles under the leading lights of the movement, including Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, made him an embodiment of French films for a global audience.

Mr. Brialy, who was born in a military family in 1933 in Algeria, was trained in comedy, tragedy and farce at drama school in Strasbourg, and he worked in the theater in his youth. His first starring appearance on screen was in Claude Chabrol's "Handsome Serge" ("Le Beau Serge") in 1958.

American audiences took note of him as a leading man in Godard's "A Woman Is a Woman" ("Une Femme Est Une Femme"), which was made in 1961 and first seen in the United States at the New York Film Festival in 1964.